There is a period in many little girls’ lives, around the age of ten, where they go completely wild. Not in the sense of Girls Gone Wild, which depressingly clogs up the search results, but in the most natural sense of the word – feral and free.

The homophobia of the right is perhaps matched only by its ephebophobia. The latter flies largely under the radar because the fear of adolescents has never been mainstreamed as a political issue. Yet just as the same-sex marriage campaign provoked all manner of homophobic bigotry, the suggestion that we enfranchise the young garners equally disturbing attitudes.